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The Ministry of Economic Development and Trade promises to eliminate the import of medicines to Russia

In 2008, drug importers will receive an additional invitation to the domestic pharmaceutical market. The Federal Service for Surveillance in Healthcare and Social Development and the Ministry of Economic Development jointly tried to defuse the atmosphere of mutual mistrust between the Russian authorities and medicine suppliers, provoked by the crisis in the drug provision program for beneficiaries. Yesterday, the director of the Department of State Regulation of Foreign Trade Activities of the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade, Galina Balandina, spoke about her department’s firm intention to withdraw from the process of issuing permits for the import of medicines into Russia. These functions will remain only with Roszdravnadzor.

As sources in the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade explained to Vremya Novostey, this innovation should significantly make life easier for importers, since the period for obtaining a permit to import one type of product will be reduced by 20 days. Now, in order to import this or that drug into Russia, the supplier needs to obtain two permits at once - “qualitative” from Roszdravnadzor and “quantitative” from the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade. The first guarantees the safety of the product and its compliance with hygienic standards, the second allows the import of a certain volume of medicines at prices specified in customs documents. But Galina Balandina believes “that the decision of the health service is enough and the extra link - the Ministry of Economic Development - needs to be removed.” The MEDT plans to change the rules from January 1, 2008.

The Ministry of Economic Development and Trade apparently hopes that for participants in the DLO program, in which up to 70% of drugs today are imported, such innovations will become an additional incentive. Especially against the backdrop of cuts in other incentives - the debts accumulated during the disastrous last year for the program are not being reduced, and purchase prices and trade markups are gradually but harshly reduced by Roszdravnadzor.

“We don’t yet know how everything will look in practice,” one of the departments of the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade told Vremya Novostey. -- Perhaps Roszdravnadzor will work with importers on a “one-window” principle, where they will be able to obtain both permits. Or a permit based on economic parameters - volume and price - will be included in a single document confirming quality.” But regardless of the form of the document, the ministry is convinced that the new rules will lead to saving not only time, but also money for suppliers. After all, obtaining one permit from the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade now costs almost 1,300 rubles, and importers literally bring them in bundles.

However, program participants believe that the new rules for the import of medicines will not be able to even partially compensate for the accumulated debt on the part of the state, amounting to tens of billions of rubles. “I wouldn’t like to think that this is compensation, I think it’s not worth that much,” Vladimir Shipkov, director of the Association of International Pharmaceutical Manufacturers (AIPM), told Vremya Novostey. “Our members still hope to get all the money, sooner or later.”

“Suppliers always want one thing—stable rules of the game,” Alexander Kuzin, general director of the marketing company DSM Group, shared his thoughts with a Vremya Novostei correspondent. In his opinion, it was no coincidence that officials began to remove barriers specifically in the customs sphere - the claims of suppliers regarding debts are related, among other things, to the fact that they have already carefully paid Russian customs duties on all imported but unpaid drugs.

Experts agree that the changes that Galina Balandina spoke about are a kind of nod that will not entail significant changes. “In essence, the change in the procedure should not affect the market,” David Melik-Guseinov, an analyst at the Pharmexpert marketing research center, explained to Vremya Novostei. “The coordination of all licenses with the Ministry of Economic Development is a rudiment of the early post-Soviet period, when the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade oversaw all foreign economic activities of the state.”

Galina PAPERNAYA